E-readers are growing in popularity, with both the Amazon Kindle and the Sony Reader Digital Book selling in the hundreds of thousands over the past couple of years. But will e-readers ever reach the level of success to ensure their entry into the mainstream, just as the iPod achieved a few years ago?

The success of the idea of e-readers isn’t yet assured, with many people feeling it’s an unnecessary invention, with normal books made of paper perfectly capable of carrying on doing the job they’ve been doing for thousands of years. But, the Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader Digital Book are increasing in popularity, slowly but surely.

According to the WSJ, Sony has recently disclosed that it sold 300,000 units of its Reader Digital Book since it launched in October 2006. Sony also stated that over three million e-books have been downloaded to the e-reader device during that time. This is above Sony’s expectations for the device which strictly deals in books, and not newspapers and blogs like the Kindle does.

The Amazon Kindle is also proving to be a huge success, with official sales figures stated as over a quarter of a million. That’s with the device only being sold in the U.S. and in just the space of a year since it was released in Nov. 2007. The Kindle is also thought to be sold out for the next 11 to 13 weeks.

The Kindle is proving to be a real boost to Amazon’s core business, with CNN stating that 10 percent of the company’s book sales are now digital texts for the device. This is despite only 200,000 titles, out of the millions sold on the site, being available in digital format.

Oprah Winfrey is no doubt helping the Kindle and e-readers in general gain general acceptance, and authors such as Toni Morrison James Patterson have also expressed their embracing of the device. But questions remain as to whether the Kindle and e-readers will ever become as popular and in as common use as the iPod, a device which revolutionized music when it was launched in 2001.

To truly become a mainstream must, the price will have to be lowered by a huge margin, especially with the recession making consumers tighten their belts. But even if the price does drop to a more affordable sweet-spot, will most people still choose to hold one paper and ink book in their hands over a device with 200 books in electronic form?

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Entry was posted on Thursday, December 4th, 2008 at 9:42 pm under Amazon, Opinion, Technology.

Read more entries by Dave Parrack.
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